x2EXP60 by Damian VanCamp

Edward Weston once quipped that "consulting the rules of composition before taking a photograph is like consulting the laws of gravity before going for a walk." Hot Shot Contender Damian VanCamp's work seems to take this advice to heart in his series Watching The World. VanCamp sidesteps compositional convention by exposing his roll once, leaving it for a while (in the process forgetting what he had first shot), and re-exposing the film. The resultant images are generated by creative chance, revealing distorted overlays of textures and unexpected intersections of light and shadow.

According to VanCamp Watching The World is best understood next to Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai's poem, "The Resurrection of the Dead," part of which reads:

We will not take anything with us.
Even plundering kings, they all left something here.
Lovers and conquerors, happy and sad,
they all left something here, a sign, a house,
like a man who seeks to return to a beloved place
and purposely forgets a book, a basket, a pair of glasses,
so that he will have an excuse to come back to the beloved place.
In the same way we leave things here.
In the same way the dead leave us.

See more of VanCamp's work on his website.

Last Friday, the International Center of Photography (ICP) opened its doors for the triennial exhibition of photography and video, Dress Codes. The show takes a look at projects that examine fashion and how it relates to art and cultural and social phenomena. Many international photographers are featured including Stan Douglas, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson and Milagros de la Torre.

The show concludes ICP's Year of Fashion, a series of exhibitions encompassing myriad angles on fashion including the manufacturing industry, impact on identity, relationship to age and gender, and consumption of clothing and fashion-related objects. The series has included Avedon Fashion 1944-2000, Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, The Condé Nast Years 1923-1937, and Weird Beauty: Fashion Photography Now. Dress Codes offers a critical new view on fashion's role from everyday dress to haute couture as a means of expression, statement, or self-identity.

Dress Codes remains on view through January 17, 2010 and ICP will host several events in relation to the exhibit. For more information, visit the exhibition page.

International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas (at 43rd St)
New York, NY 10036
Ph: 212.857.0000

Hours:
Tues-Thurs: 10:00 am-6:00 pm
Fri: 10:00 am-8:00 pm
Sat-Sun: 10:00 am-6:00 pm

Collocation No. 14 (NATURE) Left Panel and Collocation No. 14 (NATURE) Right Panel by Mickey Smith

If you were at the NY Art Book Fair at P.S.1 this past weekend you may have been lucky enough to see Winter 2007 Hot Shot and recent 20x200 edition-maker Mickey Smith's 50-panel TODAY installation on view at the Invisible-Exports booth. If you missed it, then you will be glad to know that Mickey will end the year with a flurry of exciting events.

At the end of this month she'll have work in a group show Artists Who Use Texts to Say Nice Things curated by Aaron Krach. The show will be at 206 Rivington Street, #4D, NYC with a short, two-day run: October 24–25, 1–6pm. Mickey's work will also make a showing in Issue #13 of ESOPUS. The magazine will host a publication launch and exhibition in New York on October 27, 6–8pm. Check the ESOPUSsite for more details.

In December, Mickey will unveil an installation funded by the Manhattan Community Arts Fund Project funded by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Last, but not least, Mickey will join her gallery, Invisible-Exports in Miami for the NADA Art Fair at the The Deauville Beach Resort from December 3–6, 2009.

Still want more Mickey? Read a 20x200 interview with her and visit her website to keep up with more upcoming exhibitions, installations and other news.

LESS 7 by Sergei Sviatchenko

Browsing through this year's second edition of Hot Shot contenders, the bright colors and faceted shapes of Sergei Sviatchenko's photo collage submissions brought my scroll to a stop. A 60-year old architect from the Ukraine, Sergei uses collage to invite the public within his artistic process, asking for reflection on our modern vision of life and culture. His most recent series, LESS, explores portraits and architecture, recombining photos into singular objects that float against a flat space of emotive neon. He writes,

It might sound absurd or surreal, but the recontextualisation [sic] of familiar everyday objects, with the use of photo collage are turned into scarp contoured, sculptural expressions, point out the media imagery all around us and delivers the imagery in new, dynamic forms.

Following a large history of photomontage artists from the Constructivists to the Dadaists, Sergei takes the medium one step further by also photographing his collages parading through real space. These pieces are interacting with fingers, toes and various environmental elements, adding a voyeuristic and process-heavy dimension to the work.

Sergei's surreal world of jumbled miscellany is more readily experienced in his large-scale, pervading installation work, which include drawing, painting and video (an expansion on his belief that all art is inherently a collage).

In 2002, Sergei opened a collaborative non-profit exhibition space, Senko Studio in Viborg, Denmark. The space showcases emerging new media artists and experimental projects, while his accompanying venture, Senko Frame Project, has expanded to include contemporary video art.

His most recent show, Mutatis Mutandis, in collaboration with photographer Jan von Holleben, combined human and animal structures superimposed over scenic landscapes at the Farmani Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.

Toys R'Us Customer Pickup by Darrius Thompson

Darrius Thompson's Toys R' Us Customer Pickup is spare in subject and composition but long on possibility. On one level is the frank presentation of a bland, if not unsightly, scene. A steel door is barely demarcated from the surrounding surface, the side or back of a major retail store. The asphalt comes right up to the edge of the building save for a small patch of concrete. The few other details are pedestrian; the stain on the door is perhaps the most compelling detail of the overall picture.

This attention to the banal and ugly has a proud pedigree in modern photography. Lewis Baltz turned his camera on the unexpressive surfaces of corporate buildings in his landmark The new Industrial Parks near Irvine, California, published in 1974. This would soon be succeeded by the New Topographics exhibition and catalog (of which Steidl has also published a volume dedicated to the show and its legacy). This attention to the ready-made environment at hand transformed photographic practice in allowing the quotidian and distasteful as legitimate subjects for depiction and consumption. Darrius is clearly embracing this tradition in its entirety.

Darrius has more work up on his site as well as a blog and resource site, urbansand, both worth checking out (including interviews with 20x200 edition-maker Michael Lundgren and contender Bryan Formhals).

2009 First Edition Hot Shot Parsley Steinweiss sent us exciting news that two exhibits featuring her work are both opening this week. The first, Derived, Borrowed, and Stolen, curated by Basak Malone and Sara Wight, runs October 1st–15th at Broadway Gallery (473 Broadway, 7th Floor) in New York. The opening is tonight, October 1st from 6:00–8:00 p.m and also includes work by Sarah Sharpe, Katie St. Claire, Sara Wight and Jordan Tate.

Frome the press release,

Derived, Borrowed, and Stolen brings together artists whose work addresses the nature of originality and its complicated relationship with the visual arts. The central theme and title is inspired by the well-known quote, "talent borrows, genius steals," which is said by some to have come from none other than Picasso (rumor has it that it might also have been Morrissey's, of the rock band Smiths, or even Oscar Wilde's). The uncertainty surrounding the origins of the quote is ironically apt. Linked by this common thread, the works in this show raise questions about what constitutes creativity in today's world, one in which the Internet has rendered copying and plagiarizing in the visual arts easier and more socially acceptable.

For those of you out in Colorado, Parsley's work is also on view at the 2009 International Exhibition of Fine Art Photography juried by Andy Adams (of Flak Photo), at the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, CO. The opening reception is tomorrow, Friday, October 2nd from 6:00–9:00 p.m and will also feature images by 2008 Hot Shot Yijun (Pixy) Liao and Jen Bekman Gallery artist Brad Moore.

The Center for Fine Art Photography also has two open calls for juried exhibitions with deadlines on October 20th and October 27th. The first, New Visions will be juried by Michael Itkoff, founder of Daylight Magazine and offers the opportunity for cash prizes and being featured in various online galleries. The second, Portfolio Showcase, Volume 4 has an open theme and will select fifteen photographers for an exhibition, with the image from the winning portfolio to be used as the cover for the Volume 4 publication. Click on the above exhibition titles for more information about submissions and prizes!

And, last but not least: our 2nd Edition 2009 Hey, Hot Shot! competition closes in just a few, short weeks! The deadline is 8:00 p.m EST on Friday, October 23rd. Enter here!

Untitled by Matt Dallos

Contender Matt Dallos returns to us in this round of competition with work from his series, I Want The Red One. The images, taken at a carnival-like scene full of burly men examining muddy fields full of tractors, pays homage to one of America's most trusted pieces of machinery. The tractors here are the reason for celebration; they are being examined, fixed, rode upon and raced, with swaths of onlookers concentrating on the vehicles. On the neighboring fairgrounds families en masse gather to watch fireworks, sparklers, and nighttime tractor riders creating an aura reminiscent of some of 2009 First Edition Hot Shot Mike Sinclair's large-scale portraits of fairgrounds, rodeos, and carnivals.
These large-scale celebrations bring about the opportunity to observe both individuals, and individuals as a dynamic group, who are often focused on a specific spectacle—in this case, it is the tractors.

This work is a departure from Dallos' previously submitted series of triptychs, which examined intersections of man and nature on the South Island of New Zealand, but both are entrenched in the connection of humans to the land. Of his work, Matt writes,

I constantly immerse myself in topics such as our relationship with the land, the idea of human scale, agri-business, the dichotomy of wild and civilized. But in my life I am unable to separate these abstract ideas from the reality of topography, geology, ecology. In the end I am bound to the rock, to the pavement, to the trees, to the land.

See more from I Want The Red One and other series on Matt's website.

p.s. You can see more photos from our first-ever Hey, Hot Shot! Confab + Print Trade on flickr!

The first HHS! Confab + Print Trade at White Rabbit went down last night, and it was awesome to see so many photographers, Hot Shots, and panelists in attendance. Everyone's spirits seemed high, even with the technical challenge of not having a microphone; everyone handled my bullhorn-voice with good cheer. We hope all of you who made it had a great time, met and mingled with other photographers, and for those who participated in the print-trade, left with new artwork for your home.

Extra special thanks go to our photographer for the night, Winnie Au, who took all the photos you see here, and our event sponsors: Manish from Arlo/Artists, Perry and Yancey from Kickstarter, and the fine folks from Crumpler. Arlo is very kindly extending a 25% off the $100 annual fee discount on occasion of the Confab. With Arlo/Artists, you can build your custom portfolio website without setup or additional fees, inclusive of hosting, custom design, unlimited images and video, a multimedia blog, and integration with Twitter and Facebook. Use the code HHS322 after a two week free trial.

And of course, thanks to our venue, White Rabbit, and the members of the Jen Bekman Projects' team who made this happen: Casey, Jeffrey, Jacqueline, Raul, Jane, Youngna, Sara, and Kika . We missed the presence of our fearless leader Ms. Bekman—and indeed a few of us feel a tad under the weather today (Get those flu shots! Wash those hands!)—but it was great to have so many of us in one place to meet all of you in the HHS! community.

If you were there last night and took pictures, please tag them "Hey, Hot Shot! Confab". We'll be adding our batch of event photos to flickr shortly, so look for more shots of the night there.

And, don't forget: The Hey, Hot Shot! 2009 Second Edition Competition is still open. We're accepting entries until October 23, 2009 at 8:00 p.m EST. Enter here, and we look forward to seeing you at our next event!

A quick reminder to join us for the Hey, Hot Shot! Confab & Print Trade TOMORROW!

When: Tuesday, September 29th, from 6:00 to 8:30 p.m.
Where: White Rabbit, 145 E. Houston Street (between Eldridge + Forsythe) in New York City.
Why: Mingle with Hot Shots, esteemed panelists, contenders and fellow artists.

Participate in our Print Trade! Bring an 8.5" x 11" (or smaller) photographic print of your own and leave the party with another artist's work! Please email us a jpeg of the photograph (800 px across @ 72 dpi) you plan to bring to the Confab with your RSVP at RSVP@heyhotshot.com. Many of you have already RSVPed. Thank you! But, if you haven't, please remember that space is limited, so let us know if you plan to attend.

There will be drink specials, giveaways from our generous sponsors at Arlo/Artists and Crumpler—with a few surprises from JBP as well—and ample opportunities to meet fellow photographers and artists in the JBP community. Update: Representatives from Kickstarter—a new way to fund ideas and endeavors—will also be present to tell us a little bit about the project and answer any of your questions!

See you there!

Untitled (Sleep) by Jaime Permuth

Jaime Permuth ventures into challenging territories of contemporary art practice with his series, The Completely Visible World. Permuth casts a nude couple into a grimy service core, magnifying their apparent vulnerability with the kind of lighting and metallic effects seen in high-end print ad campaigns and German car brochures. Upon scrutiny, they are behind a window, wherein light-studded trees are seen in reflection.

Of this body of work, the Guatemala-born, New York-based Permuth says:

In our twenty-first century, an endlessly sharp and unforgiving spotlight is cast on the body, which once captured is then processed and altered by digital technologies to please the greatest number of consumers. Humanity is redefined as the vast array of spectators which decides how all should look and move through space.

Seen through portals and windows throughout The Completely Visible World, this modern Adam and Eve are subject first to the photographer's staging and manipulation, then our gaze, and ultimately, a commercial context. It's unclear whether even having each other in this harsh environment will suffice, which is an allegory we all might want to ponder.

We're excited to announce that Kickstarter, the Brooklyn-based online micro-funding community launched by Perry Chen + Yancey Strickler will also be sponsoring the HHS! Confab + Print Trade next Tuesday, September 29th, 6:00 to 8:30 p.m. They'll be on-site to talk about Kickstarter, which enables artists and creative thinkers to propose projects for funding, and allows interested supporters to pledge both small and large amounts to meet their financial goals. The pledges are reciprocated by incentives offered by the the artists, like an exchange for a screen print, homemade cookies, or copy of an album (that you might be helping create!).

20x200 edition-maker Kevin Cyr has raised $820 of a goal of $2,000 thus far for his project, CAMPER KART. In order for the funds to be distributed to the project creator, the entirety of the funding goal must be met (or exceeded). Cyr has 38 days left in his goal to meet the funds of CAMPER KART, and you can help him out by going to Kickstarter and making a pledge for his project. He writes,

I'm building the CAMPER KART: a pop-up camper affixed to a shopping cart. It's a functioning sculptural piece that seeks to explore aspects of housing, mobility, and autonomy. It is also largely about self-reliance and making do with less....

Throughout the last year, I decided to build my own type of vehicles. On a trip to Beijing, I conceived and built a CAMPER BIKE: an amalgamation of a Chinese 3-wheeled flatbed bike with an American cabover style camper. Interested in building a series of mobile vehicles and inspired by Cormac McCarthy's novel, The Road, I started sketching plans for CAMPER KART: a mobile unit built into a shopping cart--an ubiquitous urban object....

With your support, I can not only finish the construction, but document the piece through drawings, paintings, and a photographic print.

A video also accompanies his project, which you can watch by clicking on the widget above. You can browse other projects on the site, including a great one titled Designing Obama proposed by Scott Thomas, Design Director of the Obama campaign, to fund a book chronicling the art and design of the campaign. Backers get copies of the book, starting with $10 earning you digital access all the way up to $150 for a special-edition copy with a gold sleeve.

At the Confab, Perry and Yancey will be around to answer all your questions about the ins and outs of Kickstarter (and hopefully give us all a demo). Look for them there!

bright black sky by Julia Galdo

Hot Shot contender Julia Galdo has submitted a series of self-portraits that offer fragmentary narratives full of tension and curiosity. Julia writes, "What I learned while making [this] work is how to project emotions, problems, anxieties through the interaction of an environment. . . . It's my hope that they connect with the person in that frame in a sympathetic way."

Photographers who explore desire and female identity now constitute a distinct category of the modern canon, inclusive of Francesca Woodman, Cindy Sherman and Anna Gaskell. Galdo's work shares these qualities, yet possesses its own sense of isolation and everyday surrealism.

See more of Julia's photographs on her website.

Waiting room, Alishan, Taiwan. 2008 by Magda Biernat

New York-based photographer Magda Biernat returns to us again in this year's second edition of competition with compelling work from her travels abroad. After entering 2009's first round of competition, she was selected (by Jen herself!) as a winner of Photo-Op, the 14th Annual Photographic Competition run by Photographic Center Northwest (PCNW).

Born in Poland, Magda attended the Wielkopolska School of Photography before making her way to New York via Seattle. Then, after stints working at Magnum Photos and Metropolis Magazine, she embarked on a year of travels in 2007 to see where and how people live in seventeen different countries around the world. The image above was made during this time abroad, and is part of the series Inhabited. While many of Magda's earlier projects look at the outsides of living spaces and buildings, lining up the geometries of architecture and nature in cities both near and far, Inhabited makes a departure into closed and more personal spaces, inviting us behind the walls of buildings previously captured.

She writes of Inhabited,

I look into the quiet spaces where people sleep, wait, and work. The interiors of the rooms I've shot serve the same purpose no matter where they are found. Stripped of obvious cultural references and detached from their surroundings, they gain a kind of disorienting universality. The rooms are unoccupied but on closer inspection, items like a crumpled pillow or a half full bottle of water imply the human presence. By carefully composing each frame and eliminating the people who otherwise would help distinguish the place geographically, I wanted the spaces to become anonymous.

Though the habitats are void of people, their objects—bed posts, chairs, windows, and table legs—create the framework for Biernat's intimate insight into their lives while maintaining an overarching cultural ambiguity. One is only able to discern her possible location by tiny hints like Chinese script written on a calendar, and is left to guess who is living in these spaces, and where in the world Biernat is capturing their homes. The tone of the images is hushed and patient, and one imagines Biernat to be shooting in silence, surrounded only by the natural light that finds its way into each of these spaces.

See more of Magda's work from this series (and others) on her website and take a look at more of our contenders on flickr and facebook.

Photograph by Noah Kalina

Summer '05 Hot Shot and 20x200 edition-maker Noah Kalina is featured in the newest edition of PICTURE Magazine! Unfortunately the interview is not online, so you'll have to head to your nearest magazine shop to read the full copy. In Noah's own recap on his blog he writes, "after reading the article, another piece of wisdom I wish to share is: 'never do in person interviews. Always do the email interview.'"

There are just a few of Noah's 20x200 edition, Untitled LA, remaining on 20x200, and after that you will be out of luck, so get one while you can.

In memory of photographer Tracey Baran, who passed away in 2008 after a brief illness while at the height of her short-but-prolific career, the School of Visual Arts is hosting a benefit auction for an annual grant given in Tracey's name. The auction is ongoing through September 30th on iGavel.com and will provide proceeds for the grant, which is open to emerging female photographers from the United States.

The auction features the above image, I Miss You Already by Tracey Baran, and work by Elinor Carucci, Jen Davis, 20x200 edition-maker Scott Eiden, Jack Pierson, Brian Finke, Allen Frame, Bill Jacobson, Carrie Levy, Joseph Maida, Jan Staller, Jonathan Torgovnik and Ann Weathersby among many others.

An exhibition of Tracey's work, Pictures of Tracey is also currently on view at Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects through October 17th. Additionally, an online exhibition of works by Tracey, curated by Amy Elkins and Cara Phillips, will be on view starting today through October 5th at Women in Photography.

We are so pleased to see yet another grant opportunity for emerging artists in conjunction with the remembrance of a talented young photographer. Please take the time to view the Women in Photography gallery, bid on the auction pieces, and if you are in New York, stop by Tracey's exhibit.

PICTURES OF TRACEY
Photographs by Tracey Baran (1975-2008)
September 12- October 17, 2009
Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects
535 West 22nd Street, 6th floor
Open: Tuesday—Saturday, 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.

July 22, 2009 :: Broadway by Joe Holmes

In addition to being ridiculously talented photographers, our Hot Shots (like Beth and Alison, among many others...) are fast developing a reputation for being experts in the field of self-publishing.

For example, last week we found out that Hot Shot Kurt Tong was awarded two spots in Blurb's highly competitive Photography.Book.Now competition.

Today, two-time Hot Shot, 20x200 edition-maker, and prolific NYC street photographer Joe Holmes is teaching a class on how to put together a photo book of your own. The class promises to "walk you through the process of editing your images for presentation in a hardcover photobook as well as show you tips and tricks to create the book you want." In addition, Allen Murabayashi, CEO of Photoshelter, will be talking about how to "promote your brand and market yourself as a photographer."

The class has a cover charge of $10, but that $10 will be automatically refunded in the form of a coupon towards your new AdoramaPix photo book, which they describe as having "high-quality silver-halide prints carefully bound to lay completely flat with no gutter or stitching to break up the view on double page spreads."

Space is limited; so if you are interested, make sure to RSVP online. If you're in New York today, this class could be just the push you need to start your book!

Monday, September 21, 2009
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM

Adorama
42 West 18th street
5th floor
New York, NY 10011

Psst! There's more to come from Joe today on 20x200... stay tuned.

Hot Shot, 20x200 edition-maker, and JB artist Joe Holmes just passed along a bit of very exciting news: his image, West Forty-third Street is today's PDN Photo of the Day!

Click on over to PDN to see the image larger.

Joe's editions, Prospect Park and amnh #30 have completely sold out on 20x200, but lucky for you, there are still editions of amnh #62, amnh #10 and Prospect Park #2 left. Look out for more 20x200 editions to come from Joe very soon!

P.S. Have you RSVP'ed for the first-ever Hey, Hot Shot! Confab + Print Trade yet? Read more about it here.

Untitled from Kirby Pilcher's series Room Temperature

If you happen to be lucky enough to call Rochester home, be sure to check out Hot Shot Kirby Pilcher's solo show at the University of Rochester. Kirby is showing images from his Room Temperature series which includes the photograph that caught Miss Bekman's discerning eye back in 2007, Fortune (will be successful in...). The photo was also selected as a 20x200 edition print and is one print away from selling out!

Room Temperature will be on exhibit through October 10, 2009 at the University of Rochester Art and Music Library Gallery.

See more of Kirby's work on his website.

This reminder is a bit last minute, but if you are in Boston this evening, Hot Shot Cara Phillips' first solo show, Singular Beauty opens tonight at the Suffolk University Art Museum at NESAD. There will be a reception from 6:00 to 8:30 p.m. and the show will remain on view through October 10th.

The show takes its title from Cara's series of the same name, taking a look into the machines and spaces that drive the beauty industry. She photographs machines used for cosmetic surgery and doctors' offices, highlighting the fluorescent tones of these processes. Though her images are devoid of Botox-ed women—and actually, any people at all—the severity of the beauty treatments individuals undergo is conveyed by the tools used to implement them.

Singular Beauty
Curated by James Hull
Suffolk University Art Museum at NESAD
75 Arlington St, Boston MA
Opening Reception September 17th, 6-8:30pm

Please join the Jen Bekman Projects community for our first Hey, Hot Shot! Confab and Print Trade on Tuesday, September 29th from 6:00 to 8:30 pm. Mingle with Hot Shots, esteemed panelists, contenders and fellow artists at White Rabbit, 145 E. Houston Street (between Eldridge + Forsythe) in New York City.

Space is limited, so please RSVP at RSVP@heyhotshot.com.

Participate in our Print Trade! Bring an 8.5" x 11" (or smaller) photographic print of your own and leave the party with another artist's work! Please email us a jpeg of the photograph (800 px across @ 72 dpi) you plan to bring to the Confab with your RSVP at RSVP@heyhotshot.com.

There will be drink specials, giveaways from our generous sponsors at Arlo/Artists and Crumpler—with a few surprises from JBP as well—and ample opportunities to meet fellow photographers and artists in the JBP community.

We'll see you there!